Theatre of War

my men dont seem to follow orders or shoot... do I have to select the weapon and click

every time for every single shot?!? my tanks just roll over into oblivion and barely even get any shots off before being kiilled and my men dont do much either. ive tried using the hold position ive tried pausing and issuing orders ive pretty much tried everything and they just really either sit there and die or wander into the enemy forces and die. ive honestly tried everything but I know its something simple that im missing. please help. otherwise a great game. it takes extreme babysitting to have my soldiers shoot or do anything that must be just a silly error on my part. thanks guys.

You don't have to of course. There are many possible reasons why your units don't shoot themselves. Do they see the enemy (when you select a unit, enemies it sees are shown with normal icons while others have transparent icons)? Are they in the 'don't fire' mode by chance? If you're defending, set all the units you have to hold position mode, this would be more useful in most situations.Unit actions are also heavily influenced by their experience, for example, a novice driver will frequently overload the engine and the vehicle will stall until he turns the ignition back on. Tank driven by such driver can stop every couple of dozens of meters. The same applies to gunnery.You can run the scenario wizard and create a simplest scenario, giving yourself elite troops and regulars to your enemy, the difference between them should be clear then:)

I understand so even though they don't look as though they are shooting or firing then they still are or are engaging appropriately. Thank you that is more than I could ever ask for I really appreciate your help. I was wondering though, say I am assaulting a group of infanry with infantry... what would the difference between using a regular attack order versus using an attack ground order?!? And do you know whether or not I can que targets with shift?

Once again that helps alot. This game is awesome, too bad the sequels are a bit choppy.

Attack ground should be used for artillery fire when you know or suspect there are enemy troops or a cannon here but can't see them directly. Ordering an infantry squad to attack ground would mean they will shoot at this spot, most probably dealing zero damage and (possibly) causing suppression on nearby enemy troops, if any.

Use assault order (move+shoot) if you need to advance or just move if you need to cover a distance quickly (troops or vehicles won't stop to shoot), but be prepared for serious losses if under fire, especially if enemy is in trenches. Or one squad could shoot at the enemy while another moves to a better position, but suppression here is not as powerful like in Brothers in Arms series where entire gameplay is based on 'one squad shoots, another moves safely' mechanic.

You can queue waypoints with Shift (for move or assault orders), but not targets.

AI has been improved in the sequels, but it is not so lifelike as in Close Combat series (no wonder, Atomic Games even had a psychiatrist who specialized in battle trauma to help them tune it, plus AI dumbness is far more apparent in 3D game then in a more abstract 2D one). ToW series really shine in ballistics-armor department, where simulation-level calculations are used (inner armor fragmentation, ricochets, calculating the path of a projectile inside a vehicle, projectile normalization on armor, anything you could ask for, there are lots of info in the game manual), it is still impressive after six years that passed form the release of the first game (sadly, almost no new games of its kind are coming out).

Thank you so much once again. I would have had to go all over the internet for god knows how long just to get this knowledge because unfortunately there is little to find in the way of documentation. I like it that way though because it shows just how incredibly daunting the difficulty of these games are and makes the rewards fewer but better and more personal.

I definately noticed that detail about armor. In Tow II - kursk 1943 they even go beyond that and allow you to adjust the maximum times a shell can bounce within a penetrated vehicle (I think). And ya I kind of see what you mean about cover fire and suppression but my game is still too rough around the edges for me to comment.

Thank you once again youve saved me alot of time and im relieved that there are still a few people out there who are smart.

In Kursk that option means how many hit vectors to display for ricochets, not how many ricochets can be calculated. There is a special info overlay in Kursk and Korea games which shows all the hits on vehicles as impact vectors, displaying part of the stuff that is normally hidden from player. Check it out when you play Kursk, F4 turns it on if I remember right.